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Target Free Agents Updates

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Per PFT:

Peppers and Gross

With their season ending earlier than some expected, the Carolina Panthers will now have to turn their attention toward retaining two key players for 2009 and beyond. Offensive tackle Jordan Gross and defensive end Julius Peppers are both free agents and it may be difficult for the team to fit both under their salary cap without serious pruning elsewhere on the roster.

The Panthers are $10 million under the cap for 2009, which wouldn’t be enough to sign both men. A franchise tender to Peppers would cost in the neighborhood of $17 million and a long-term deal would average around $13 million, according to a report from the Charlotte Observer. The same report indicates that the team and Peppers’s agent Carl Carey are negotiating a deal. When asked about his desire to stay with the Panthers after last night’s game, Peppers said he wanted to make the “best decision for myself and for the Panthers’ organization.”

One way the Panthers could clear cap space would be cutting ties with Jake Delhomme, a move that probably became more likely after his six turnovers against the Cardinals. Adam Schefter reports that they’d save $6.325 million if they released the quarterback, a number that may prove too big to pass up.

UPDATE: As a reader points out, the franchise number for defensive ends quoted by the Observer seems out of whack. It was $8.879 million when Terrell Suggs was trying to be designated a defensive end last season. Peppers’ $14,137,500 was the highest cap figure for defensive ends in 2008, according to USA Today, which makes $17 million seem high indeed.

SECOND UPDATE: Actually, the $17 million isn’t out of whack. The franchise tender is the average of the top five cap figures or 120% of his previous cap figure, whichever is more. Peppers, at $14 million-plus is in the latter category.

With their season ending earlier than some expected, the Carolina Panthers will now have to turn their attention toward retaining two key players for 2009 and beyond. Offensive tackle Jordan Gross and defensive end Julius Peppers are both free agents and it may be difficult for the team to fit both under their salary cap without serious pruning elsewhere on the roster.

The Panthers are $10 million under the cap for 2009, which wouldn’t be enough to sign both men. A franchise tender to Peppers would cost in the neighborhood of $17 million and a long-term deal would average around $13 million, according to a report from the Charlotte Observer. The same report indicates that the team and Peppers’s agent Carl Carey are negotiating a deal. When asked about his desire to stay with the Panthers after last night’s game, Peppers said he wanted to make the “best decision for myself and for the Panthers’ organization.”

One way the Panthers could clear cap space would be cutting ties with Jake Delhomme, a move that probably became more likely after his six turnovers against the Cardinals. Adam Schefter reports that they’d save $6.325 million if they released the quarterback, a number that may prove too big to pass up.

UPDATE: As a reader points out, the franchise number for defensive ends quoted by the Observer seems out of whack. It was $8.879 million when Terrell Suggs was trying to be designated a defensive end last season. Peppers’ $14,137,500 was the highest cap figure for defensive ends in 2008, according to USA Today, which makes $17 million seem high indeed.

SECOND UPDATE: Actually, the $17 million isn’t out of whack. The franchise tender is the average of the top five cap figures or 120% of his previous cap figure, whichever is more. Peppers, at $14 million-plus is in the latter category.

With Peterson now gone, hopefully the new GM can talk some sense into Clark Hunt about not bringing in FA to help build the team. That's got to be the dumbest thing I've heard. How do you not bring in experienced players to mentor the young ones?

I like Gross because he can play either tackle position. But it sounds like they'll try to re-sign Gross. Peppers will be a little trickier but if he's a free agent, I could see the Chiefs grabbing him since he'll be an immediate fix.

I'm going to add Jonathan Vilma to this discussion. I think he would be a good leader for our defense, plus, he is more than likely to be a free agent. The Saints will have to give up their first round if they want to re-sign Vilma. So I highly doubt they will. Vilma will only be 27 and has great speed, wraps up when he tackles, and does great in pass coverage.

The Chiefs need to go extravagant this year in free agency!! This is probably the LAST capped year. According to PFT:

"Last Capped Year" Looks to be a near certainty
Three years ago, the NFL and the NFL Players Association worked out a new Collective Bargaining Agreement on the brink of a new league year. In fact, the two sides agreed to delay the start of the new league year on a couple of occasions in order to get a deal done.

Some people think that the goal was to avoid the beginning of the long-dreaded “uncapped year.”

It wasn’t. The goal was to avoid the last year with a salary cap, since it involves accounting rules that make it harder for the teams to keep and sign players. The thinking was that, once the teams dealt with the major headaches of the last capped year, they would have been more inclined to tolerate an uncapped year.

This time around, the last capped year is less than two months away. But there’s no sense of urgency to get a deal done.

In our view, there are several reasons for this drastically different dynamic. First, the union still doesn’t have a replacement at Executive Director for the late Gene Upshaw. Until a new Executive Director is hired, meaningful discussions simply can’t occur. (The new Executive Director likely will be picked in March.)

Second, the last time around teams were limited in the last capped year to a four-year proration of signing bonus money for draft picks, which would have made it much harder to sign first-round selections, since more cap space in the current year would have been used. This time around, a five-year proration will apply.

Third, teams aren’t spending to the cap limit like they used to. And with the $123 million per-team cap number already set due to the two-year “pegging” of the number based on projected revenues, the economic downturn will make many teams less willing or able to scrape the spending ceiling.

As a result, it’s no surprise that interim Executive Director Richard Berthelsen has advised the rank-and-file that negotiations will commence “later this year” on a new CBA.

It appears, then, that the teams are far more willing to accept a “last capped year” than they were in 2006, even if it will be very hard for some of them to get or stay under the spending limit.

The question then becomes whether putting up with the hard decisions associated with cap compliance in 2009 will make those teams more inclined to have a system without a spending maximum in 2010.

Then again, there’s also a chance that more than a few teams would like to have a season without a spending minimum, and that’s another widely overlooked reality of the looming year without a salary cap.
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The Chiefs need to spend every bit of that 30 million in cap space they currently posses on Vilma, Suggs/Peppers, Scott, Haynesworth, Dansby, Asomugha, Gross, etc.

Then, to make those moves more affordable, in 2010, you cut LJ, McIntosh, Surtain, and every other high cost, low production player we have on this team.

The thing about it TC, is that I don't think it will happen. Or better put, I don't want it to happen. When you look at the sports that are capped or uncapped, the competition seems better when it is capped. Baseball has been uncapped and while it looked good this season with the Rays making a great run all the way to the World Series, I still remember those years when the Yankees dominated because they had the most money. I don't want the Cowboys (is anyone surprised Jerry Jones likes the idea of losing the salary cap) to become the next Yankees. Hockey just added a salary cap, and it is working in their benefit to add young blood and having playoff teams add veterans through FA. Football has been great with the salary cap. It makes teams make hard decisions and it's just interesting as fans to see what happens. Like right now the Chargers are thinking of dropping/trading LT (sound like any other team we know) because he will be making close to ten million when they could re-sign Sproles for about two. I know that is just speculation at this point. While losing the salary cap may not be the end of the NFL, I still don't think it's a good idea.